Partitioning Tabular Models

Partitions in Tabular Models are one of the key features you would use Tabular Models to support. This is the best way to support incremental processing of data in Tabular Models.

Note

Power Pivot models do not support partitions.

Getting ready

In order to implement partitions, you need to have an existing table. You also need to have a partitioning plan. Most often, partitioning makes the most sense when working with data that resembles a fact table with a high row count and lots of measures. We only have one data table in our model, Internet Sales. Order Date, that looks like the best candidate for partitioning. It is unlikely that we will get orders out of sequence that will cause us to reprocess a large number of partitions. Next, we need to determine the scheme we will use. We will focus on a historic partition, a previous six months partition, and a current partition.

How to do it…

Creating partitions in a Tabular Model is fairly straightforward. You will...